


and you shall answer me

by actualromeo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Season/Series 03, accidental statement abt vore :/, beholding powers, little a manipulation, yk. jonelias tingz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26144350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualromeo/pseuds/actualromeo
Summary: Jon and Elias have a coffee shop talk.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27
Collections: Jonelias Week 2020





	and you shall answer me

**Author's Note:**

> listen.. LISTEN. i was halfway through writing the statement portion of this when i realized that it was fucking. Vore. but i didnt have any other ideas so i just left it in.
> 
> anyway. fill for day 4 of jonelias week (statements / religious themes), set like.. pre unknowing, post travels to america.

Six centimeters separate Jon’s hand from Elias’. There are other facts Jon could take in about the situation - too many, really - but he chooses this one. Focuses on it. Grounds himself with the knowledge, and leans back against the door in his mind counting millimeters and micrometers. Six centimeters is what he can guess with his two eyes alone, and so six centimeters is what it is. 

Elias shifts his hand forward, enough to halve the distance. It seems innocuous enough, but Jon jerks his head up to find a smile on his face. Intentional, of course. “Your control is admirable.”

He speaks quietly enough that Jon has to strain to hear him in the crowded coffee shop that Jon had chosen as neutral ground, somewhere public enough that he thought Elias couldn’t hurt him. A stupid thought, really- why would Elias give into his pestering to help train Jon if only to smack him down? But it’s not as though he really thought Elias was going to hurt him, anyway. Something small in the back of his mind still insists on seeing Elias as a mentor. A comfort, at least. Infuriating as it is that he won’t tell them to Jon, it’s nice to know that someone has the answers. That someone, supposedly, is invested in his life and his development.

“I don’t like keeping it- down. Keeping it quiet.” Jon says it to break the silence, really, but he can’t bring himself to stop. “Feels like something is missing.”

Elias doesn’t try to hide how pleased he is. “I doubt it would help if I told you that’s the right direction to be moving.”

Jon laughs ruefully, and tries to pretend something inside him fears what he’s becoming. “I’m afraid not,” he says, struggling against it just to struggle. Because he knows he should struggle, at least. The warm light that beats down on his back- the same one that shines in Elias’ eyes, that singes the places he looks- it sends something thrilling up his spine. But it’s certainly not fear. “It feels like,” he hesitates, the static in his throat uncomfortable enough to be distracting. “Like trapping something.”

“Let it out, then.”

“What,” says Jon. “You want me to - to compel you?”

Raising his drink, something absurdly sweet and caramel-coated, Elias takes a sip of it. Slow, just to make him wait. His other hand stays three centimeters from Jon’s. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t work,” he says kindly. “I’d rather you hone other skills, tonight.” His eyes roam over the other shop goers, but they return to Jon to say: “Divination.”

“Divination..? Really?” Jon echos slowly. Carefully does not comment on how cultish it sounds. Elias smiles anyway.

“It’s no more out of bounds than anything else you’ve displayed, is it?” He tilts his head, taps the index finger dangerously close to Jon’s against the table, manicured nails clacking. “Tell me, how many micrometers is it?”

Immediately, Jon starts: “Thirty four th--” and then snaps his jaw shut. There’s no compulsion in it, he doesn’t think. No static or  _ freeing feeling _ , just human impulse to answer. A knocking at the door. “Your point made,” he grumbles. “I don’t suppose you’re going to help.”

“I can direct, if I must.” Jon fixes him with a flat stare, and Elias chuckles. “What’s her name?” he asks, with no context. Still, an image of a woman floats into Jon’s mind. Nothing outstanding, really, if pretty. A nose ring, hair straightened and cropped at the blades of the shoulders, concealer a shade or so too light. Jon’s not an expert, but the proper match for her skin tone would be Gingerbread, not Toffee.

Without quite being aware at first, he turns in his seat, looking over the crowd. He finds her at a table across the shop, leaning forward and avidly listening to whatever her friend is staying. “She’s in love,” is the first thing that comes out of Jon’s mouth.

Elias pauses, and then reminds, “I asked her name.” Jon glances back to him and finds unbearable fondness. “Besides, I hardly think any power is needed to tell that.”

The woman across the coffee shop has snatched her friend’s hand from the air - she speaks so animatedly, and it endears her every time. Jon scoffs in belated response and tries to focus. Centers himself, and let his fingertips graze the door handle. “Alyssa Ayodele.”

“And her age?”

“Twenty six next week,” Jon responds, hands wrapped around the silver metal, clicking the lock open. “She wants to celebrate it with Noa alone, but agreed to a big party at her flat because she doesn’t want to come on too strong.” He pauses, dropping his hand from the door. “It’s not coming on  _ strong _ to celebrate your birthday with one other person."

“Mm,” Elias shrugs. “You spent yours at work. Your sense of normalcy might be.. off-kilter.”

Scoffing again, Jon sits back in his chair. Nibbles at the pastry Elias had bought him. “Normal, working adults spend their birthdays at work, Elias. The capitalistic wheel stops for no man.”

“I’m sorry,” says Elias. “Let me rephrase. You spent twenty out of twenty four hours of your birthday in the Archives.” Jon’s face burns red. “Too strong?” he asks, amused. “Alright. Where’s the nearest statement?”

Jon stops, humiliation all but forgotten. “In - in the Archives?”

Elias shakes his head, tapping on the table once more. His eyes are over-bright where they bore into Jon, dilated, though his expression is calm. “The nearest statement giver. Someone has a story for you, Jon.”

He freezes, the words striking something primal in him. “A story.” Elias gives nothing more, so Jon nods, steeling himself. A story. There’s.. a story, somewhere here. He closes his eyes, then opens them, and then stretches himself past his seams.

It’s so warm, outside his body. Gooseflesh prickles on his upper arms, the back of the neck tingling in the sensation of being seen, but his muscles go lax in the holy comfort of it all. He doesn’t feel scared - he feels the fear being actively twisted inside of him. Not taken, just bent into something new and strange. He stares emptily into the table, stuck in the sensation until Elias takes his hand.

Three centimeters closed. The measurement is closer to atoms, now, as Elias tightens his grip. Squeezes his fingers. Jon returns to himself just enough. “Fabricio Heijman. He,” Jon pauses to swallow. “It must be the  one Gerry called..  ah, the Hunt? With, with the chasing?”

“Hmm,” says Elias. Jon hangs in limbo until he repeats the sound, with a more approving tilt. “I would say it’s better summarized by the Choke.”

Jon scowls. “The- I feel like the claustrophobia is secondary. He was quite literally  _ hunted _ and  _ eaten _ . It’s in the name.”

He does not rise to Jon’s bite, though he thankfully does not pull out the smug, patronizingly intrigued smile that he frequents when Jon is riled up. He just raises his eyebrows, neutral but for the encouraging air, and asks, “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I just - he was hunted. In the woods, and eaten, and has hallucinations of the creature that took him. That sounds rather textbook Hunt.”

It’s only when Elias squeezes his hand again that Jon remembers he’s holding it. “Tell me,” he repeats, and Jon blinks at him. “Jon,” he insists, one more time. “ _ Tell me. _ ”

By the time Jon catches on, he’s already slipped into that warm place inside of him once more. The golden light of the Beholding stings from how quickly he sinks into it, and he braces himself in Elias’ gaze and sinks further, allowing the piercing burn. He slips out of his own eyes and into the eyes of a photo on the wall, taken by the shop owner's son. Slips from there to the woman on Fabricio’s left, who looks critically at another one of their group. He doesn’t so much see from them as he does know innately what they experience, jumping closer and closer to Fabricio.

Just when he feels almost there, bathed in the securing light of the Eye, Elias drops his hand. His one tether to the world goes out like a spot of darkness in the all consuming light, and Jon shudders with the feeling. He barely has time to be betrayed before the story sinks in through every pore of his skin and into every branch in his veins. “Statement of Fabricio Heijman,” comes out of his mouth, unaware, “Regarding his time spent in digestion.

“There’s no evidence that this was real. I’m not convinced myself, really. On a good day, it was a fucked up stress dream, and on a bad one it’s a sign that I’m losing my mind. Bit of a bad time to be going nuts, honestly. My living situation isn’t the most stable thing in the world, and it doesn’t help that the whole place is tied to that  _ thing _ now.

“My best guess for it is a wolf, but I couldn’t tell you how one of those got this close to the city. It was my first day out of my flat and into my mate Virgil’s, and he hadn’t been kind enough to provide the right address. I’d got my two duffel bags, the last five percent of my phone battery, and an umbrella only large enough to protect either me or my bags from the rain, and I’d chosen my bags. I’d rung up the address he told me and found that it wasn’t his flat, so I was waiting for him to pick up the phone when the breathing started.

“It was pressed right up against my ear, so close that I thought it must have been Virgil picking up before I realized the calling ring was still playing. It stopped when the call didn’t go through and picked up again when I called. Closer. Practically inside me.

“The idea of running came on the third call, when I could feel its  _ spit  _ on the verge of dripping down my neck. I didn’t even look behind me, I just started walking. Slowly, at first, to not look like a crazy man racing around a London suburb at ten at night, but faster as I felt it creeping up. I didn’t hear it - the panting was already practically inside my skull, and the rain drowned out anything else - but felt the bulk getting closer and closer, a solid presence pushing me forward. It’s not like I could fight it; it’d crush me.

“When it started pressing in around my sides, I started sprinting. Stopped caring what I looked like and started caring for my life, even as I got myself completely lost in the new neighborhood. I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried. I’d like to see anyone else be chased by a walking hydraulic press and keep a lid on it. The sobbing was only a little more embarrassing, when I’d finally run into a dead end. An unstoppable force against an immovable object, and I was trapped right in the middle.

“I didn’t get a look at it even when I turned around to face it like a man. Just a glimpse of teeth and tongue and saliva drooling around me, one tooth wider than my body. They were right there by my head already, the jaws poised the entire chase. When I turned, they snapped tight around me.” Jon feels something snap closed around his neck, his whole body. His sound of alarm is swallowed into the statement.

“A thick, slimy piece of meat scooped me up when I sprawled forward, what must have been its tongue unbearably hot and slick under my hands. It pulsed to the beat of some song I couldn’t hear. It undulated, too, out of tune and rapid and pulling me down into its gullet. It was salivating, like the world's most disgusting water slide. I rode them when I was a kid and never liked them - the closed space always made me panicky. The claustrophobia I thought I knew didn’t hold a fucking candle to being inside of this creature.

“It  _ swallowed _ me. I couldn’t tell you how large a thing it must have been to swallow a six foot tall man, but it dwarfed me completely,” he shakes, something reaching a fever pitch inside his head. There is singing, harmonized, between the heartbeat of Heijman’s creature and the creature that lives inside Jon. “Its stomach lining sealed itself to every inch of skin, suctioning painfully. There was nothing in there, no acid, no prey or lakewater in its stomach. Just me, compressed -” Jon’s voice catches. “Compressed as tightly as -”

It’s so bright that his head swims, and the thunk of his forehead against the table is what gives away that he’s collapsed. He sees only the red darkness of the Buried, simultaneously shaking with each breath and held too tightly to tremble. Behind the panting, he hears Elias’ soft voice. “Not quite an altar,” he muses, “But it’ll do.”

That’s when his consciousness abandons him.

He comes to angled into Elias’ body. Face tucked into the junction of his shoulder, a soft, natural darkness. On instinct he tries to flinch away - the walls are too close and pressing inwards - but Elias’ hand around him holds him still. “Steady, now.”

“Wh,” says Jon quite elegantly, squinting his eyes open. They’re no longer in the coffee shop, but he recognizes the surroundings as nearby. They’re on a bench just a few steps outside. “What happened..?”

“I think I’ve given you enough help for today,” Elias says. His stern tone is juxtaposed by the soothing stroke of his hand down Jon’s back.

Still, he scowls. “ _ Enough help, _ ” he snaps. “You- you didn’t do anything. Just pointed me at a man and let me fall.”

“I pointed out a man and let you discover your ability, Jon. I have always been clear that I won’t hand-feed things to you.”

Though he tucks himself closer to Elias (his head pounds, still, but Elias is so warm...), he huffs. “You won’t make an exception for your suffering Archivist?”

“Begging, are you?” he asks, but he smiles.

Jon flushes, scrunches his nose. “No. Begging is far more pathetic than this.”

Elias’ head tilts. Jon feels it in the twist of his neck and jaw. “And this is...?” When Jon gives no answer, he chuckles. “Alright. Let’s try one more divination exercise.”

“I’d really rather not pass out again.”

“You won’t,” he assures, calming a skittish cat. “Just look at me.”

With a sigh that he hopes comes across as annoyed, Jon pulls himself just far enough up to make eye contact with Elias. The information he’s offering is obviously bait, just on the surface of Elias’ thoughts. He barely has to brush his hand across the door to snatch the visions from his mind, of perching his thumb on Jon’s lips and parting them, threading his hand into Jon’s hair and kissing him until he has to catch his breath; just chaste enough for public and yet enough to leave Jon obscenely flustered.

His brain catches up to his eyes and stutters, staring blankly into Elias’ face. The faintest hint of a smile plays there, curious and playful, and -

Almost enough that he doesn’t look like a murderer.

“For clarity’s sake,” says Elias. “This is me asking permission.”

Jon nods, not quite sure why, and leans forward.


End file.
